


At First Sight

by JFoxtrotSierra



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 19:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JFoxtrotSierra/pseuds/JFoxtrotSierra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/4885.html?thread=6815253#cmt6815253">this prompt</a> at the Cabin Pressure prompt meme: `Describe the MJN crew of their first love at first sight moments.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	At First Sight

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Raven for beta and encouragement.

If anyone were to ask her, Carolyn would tell them there's no such thing as love at first sight. (Not that anyone who's seen her sharky smile would _dare_ ask something so personal, for fear of the ensuing tongue lashing.) She was swept off her feet by Gordon, that's true, but she knows now it wasn't love.

He'd promised her the earth, and, fair's fair, he gave it to her. He flew her to Vienna the week they met, for dinner in a small, candlelit restaurant overlooking the Danube. He asked her to marry him in Prague in the bright spring sunshine and stole her away for a whirlwind honeymoon in Tokyo.

But when they get back, some of the sparkle fades. Being a stewardess isn't as glamorous as she'd thought, and though she visits fifteen new countries in her first month, she's mainly too tired to appreciate them. Then he's making money like there's no tomorrow, rich and successful enough to look after them both, and she doesn't _have_ to work, but she's not the type to sit at home, domestic and unassuming. She's … restless.

When she catches him in bed one afternoon with his PA – a bleached blonde trollop, barely even out of school five minutes – it's little enough of a surprise. What startles her is how much it still _hurts_. She takes Arthur, and GERTI, and although she's bruised, she feels somehow _free_.

\---

Douglas falls in love the first moment he sees his daughter, purple and wrinkled and screaming in her mother's arms. He doesn't realise until then how pallid and flimsy, how empty his relationships have been. He thought he'd loved his wives – no, he _wanted_ to think that. If he's honest, really, brutally honest with himself, he knows deep down they were just … comfortable. A convenient warmth, to keep the cold and the loneliness at bay. But now, looking down at his daughter, her tiny purple fists clenched either side of her wrinkled face … she's beautiful.

Unfortunately, in the following months, it isn't only Douglas who ponders this. Tired from endless nights of broken sleep, and the additional financial pressure a new life brings, `comfortable' isn't enough any more. He's saddened at the break-up of his marriage, but it's the diminished contact with his baby that hurts him most, that sends him spiralling into the arms of the bottle.

He's never loved anyone as much as her, before or since. (It doesn't mean he's stopped looking.)

\---

He's four years old, just starting school. On his first day, he walks into the class gripping his mother's hand with all the strength in his tiny fingers. The school uniform he wears – bought by his mother `for him to grow into' – only emphasises his incredible slightness.

After milk and biscuits, he's too shy to tell anyone he needs the toilet, so he sits silently at his desk, head bowed and shoulders hunched as if to evade notice. Eventually someone notices the damp stain spreading under his chair, and the quiet tears pouring down his cheeks. Fortunately, spare underwear is a staple of the reception class cupboard.

Afterwards, one of the teacher's assistants takes him into the quiet corner, and tells him to pick a book, any book, for them to read together. He reaches out blindly, eyes still blurry with tears, then settles down on her knee. Her deep red hair slips forward, brushing against his cheek, and she smells of plasticine, and crayons, and the stale tang of chalk. He looks at the pictures while she reads to him, she turns the page, and there in front of him is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He's instantly entranced, reaching out a hand to trace the perfect curves and strong lines of Freddie, the littlest aeroplane.

\---

Arthur's never really understood the idea of love at first sight. I mean, he loves Mum, right? And that's fine, but he can't remember the first time he saw her.

(He assumes this was immediately following his birth; maybe not though, after all don't puppies and kittens have their eyes closed for the first few days, and Arthur hasn't ever seen a newborn baby, not a really _tiny_ one, so maybe it's the same with human babies and – where was he?)

Many things in life are mysterious to Arthur - the falling leaves in autumn, the flight of a bumblebee, the way they make Toblerones such a _brilliant_ shape. Love at first sight, though, he thinks it's probably easy. After all, he's surrounded by love, isn't he? Douglas and Skip and Mum and Herc – he loves all of them, and he knows that, in their own way, they love him too. That's what families _are_.


End file.
